Chapter CCLVII

Lastly, with respect to the old riddle of the freedom of the will. In the only sense in which the word freedom is intelligible to me--that is to say, the absence of any restraint upon doing what one likes within certain limits--physical science certainly gives no more ground for doubting it than the common sense of mankind does. And if physical science, in strengthening our belief in the universality of causation and abolishing chance as an absurdity, leads to the conclusion of determinism, it does no more than follow the track of consistent and logical thinkers in philosophy and in theology, before it existed or was thought of. Whoever accepts the universality of the law of causation as a dogma of philosophy, denies the existence of uncaused phenomena. And the essence of that which is improperly called the freewill doctrine is that occasionally, at any rate, human volition is self-caused, that is to say, not caused at all; for to cause oneself one must have anteceded oneself--which is, to say the least of it, difficult to imagine.